Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Re: legal notice

if you are claiming constructive eviction, this is a very delicate area of landlord-tenant law and proper procedures must be taken in order to avoid ongoing rental liability. if you can give me more detailed facts to your case as well as your landlord's position on your abandonment to date, hopefully i can provide you with more legal direction. feel free to email this additional information today for additional assistance.

Re: legal notice

The tenant's usual remedies for breach of the implied warranty of habitability are (1) repair-and-deduct, or (2) withholding a portion of the rent by paying contract rent diminished by an allowance reflecting damages resulting from the defect. Either action is a defense to an unlawful detainer action for failure to pay full rent. The landlord must repair the defects immediately upon becoming aware of them; there is no 'reasonable time for repairs.'

On the other hand, I can find no authority saying that a breach of the warranty of habitability is a ground for terminating the lease and moving out. The usual remedy is, as I said above, repair-and-deduct or reduced rent. Moving out would seem to be risky, then, because the landlord could repair the premises the day after you move out and boom, the rental value is back to the full contract rate and you're liable for it, subject only to a mitigation of damages limitation after it's established that you've abandoned the premises.

In theory, a constructive eviction is a sufficient breach by the landlord to allow the tenant to treat the lease as terminated and to move out and pay no rent after moving out. However, even the California Eviction Defense Manual does not discuss this tenant remedy.

Giving notice in writing that you are moving out because of untenantability is much better practice, but oral notice or anything else that puts the landlord on notice may be effective; at least, it would permit the landlord to treat the premises as abandoned. This will reduce your potential liability if sued.

I don't understand what you mean by 'remedies for relocation benefits.' What kind of relocation benefits? Remedies for what?